The deal, which was announced in a statement made by the two earlier this morning, involved Intel Media’s OnCue project changing hands as well as around 350 Intel employees migrating over to the US communications firm.

Neither Intel or Verizon disclosed the price with two people familiar with the matter telling Bloomberg that it was less than $200 million [£121 million] and thus over $300 million [£182 million] less than Intel valued the company at.

“Intel Media’s over-the-top TV products are truly innovative and under Verizon’s ownership have the potential to change how people interact with content. The critical factor in gaining efficient access to content is based on your ability to scale quickly in subscribers and end users, which is why selling these assets to Verizon makes perfect sense, with its millions of FiOS network and wireless customers,” said Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel.

Intel confirmed that it would be rolling out a web TV service early last year when it was revealed that the firm was working on a set-top box that would allow live TV streaming and movies as well as on-demand content.

Cracks in the project began to appear in September 2013 when the chipmaker had apparently failed to secure funding from the likes of Samsung, Amazon and Netflix to help the project become a reality and it would be delayed until 2014 as a result.

It eventually emerged that Intel, under the stewardship of new CEO Krzanich, was actually thinking about selling the company before the end of the year with the price floated at a heady $500 million [£303 million]. Verizon was rumoured to be interested at the time and it has already spoken to various content providers about launching a streaming TV service.